May 28, 1918 - Don Martin writes about Americans bombarded with gas shells

Don Martin diary entry for Tuesday, May 28, 1918:

Stayed in Neufchateau and wrote letters and some mail stories. Spent the evening at the club.

Don Martin on Tuesday, May 28, wrote about American forces being bombarded with gas shells. The dispatch was published in the New York Herald on Wednesday, May 29, 1918.

‘WEARY OF WAR,’ GERMANS’ PLEA TO AMERICANS

Prisoner Who Deserted Says Many of His Comrades Are Eager to Quit

TROOPS SHIFTED FROM EAST FRONT

Enemy Trying to Convince Pershing’s Men of the Presence of a Big Force

By DON MARTIN

[Special cable to the Herald]

WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE, Tuesday

German prisoners taken by the Americans say that most of the men opposed to the Americans returned from the Russian front. Their leaders want them to keep the Americans constantly harassed and to cause the suspicion that a great German force is near at hand. One German who deserted yesterday said many others want to desert, as they are weary of war.

The net result of the powerful gas attack launched against the Americans yesterday in the Luneville sector and later when patrols attacked in this sector was five dead Germans and no deaths of Americans.

The Lorraine sector gas attack lends strength to the belief that the war will develop even more frightfulness, due to the Germans’ fiendish determination to fight with the deadliest gases. Here the Germans set off five hundred large phosgene gas shells from projections recently implanted in the sector in order to give to the Americans a taste of what the Canadians got at Ypres.

It is known the Germans are employing electrically connected batteries, connected so as to fire simultaneously large gas shells which contain each more than three gallons.

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